USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Fall River > Centennial history of Fall River, Mass. : comprising a record of its corporate progress from 1656 to 1876, with sketches of its manufacturing industries, local and general characteristics, valuable statistical tables, etc. > Part 12
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FALL, RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
Cape Cod, and the long circuit southward of Nantucket, the temperature is still so much modified as to be 7º warmer for the mean of the winter months at Nantucket than at Cambridge, and nearly 5° warmer at New Bedford. Williamstown" ( Berkshire County) " is 7º colder than New Bedford for the average of the winter months."
It will be remembered that New Bedford and Fall River are closely contiguous points, bearing about the same relation to the sca.
The internal administration of a Fall River industry is not essentially different from that in other advanced centres of cotton manufacturing, treas- urers, agents, and superintendents of mills exercising the duties conventionally attaching to those offices. But, unlike other centres, the treasurers are inva- riably residents, and generally the subordinate offices are filled by persons immediately interested in the business. The stockholders likewise are, in a much greater proportion than governs elsewhere, "native there, and to the manner born." This is a very great, indeed, an almost incalculable factor in the general development. Absenteeism, the curse of most large congrega- tions of industry, is unknown and, happily, unfelt in its baleful influences. The community itself, in its integral construction and outward manifestation, is one of active, interested workers, the owners and projectors breathing the same atmosphere with the operatives, who, in their turn, under such a system, may also become, by diligence and temperance, owners and projectors. From this condition of the community results the intensely practical spirit that per- vades and controls the place, and assures conservatism of management and wise husbandry of resources through the control and under the watchfulness of a universal intelligence. Too much importance can not be ascribed to this most fortunate sympathy of the social and economical constituents of any population ; but its largest uses and richest results are manifested in the great cotton-manufacturing centres.
To the conservatism and practical nature of the people of Fall River is due the fact that the history of the place shows so insignificant a number of industrial disappointments. In 1871-2, when mills were springing up in number like a forcst, the business world was dazcd by the extraordinary spectacle, and wiseacres, who did not know its people, began to mutter, “ Fall River is mad, downright crazy." The event has not, however, justified the censures of the cynics or the croakings of the seers. On the contrary, the statisticians have discovered that the number of spindles added to the produc- tive force was demanded by the development of trade, and that what appeared to be the inspiration of an inflated unreason was really the movement of a calm and intelligent calculation. Speculative ideas and business charlatanry, so far from being encouraged, are not even entertained by these practical
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COTTON AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
schemers, and the result is that no place in New England, within our ken, has so very small a grave-yard of deceased enterprises, great expectations that have died of slow consumption or sudden collapse.
What the future has in store for Fall River, if we study simply its past, need not be answered indefinitely. To-day not a spindle in its mills, nor a granite block in their walls, is weighted with a mortgage. It is the first city in the extent of its cotton manufacture in the United States, and second only to Manchester in the world. Its resources are within its own com- munity, and the market for its production is the whole globe. So long as the same conservative enterprise, honcst purpose, and harmony of effort, which have established its fortuncs, are the distinctive qualities of its people, it will continue to be, as it now is, the finest monument of American industry.
PROGRESS OF INVENTIONS IN COTTON MACHINERY.
Anno Domini.
1765. Fly Shuttle (John Kay) and Drop Box (Robert Kay).
1767. Spinning Jenny-Patented in 1770-Hargraves.
1769. Spinning Frame-Arkwright. Wyatt's Patent was in 1738, but was not put into practical operation.
1775. Mule-Jenny and Frame combined-Crompton.
1785. Power Loom-brought into general use in 1820-Cartwright.
1792. Cotton Gin-Whitney. American.
1797. Cards-Whittemore. American.
1797. Reeds-Wilkinson. American.
1807. Steam Engine-Wyatt and Fulton. American.
MACHINES
ANI)
PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE.
T THE perfection of machine process which has been reached in the produc- tion of a single yard of cotton cloth is one of the best illustrations of the attainment possible to patient study and indefatigable experiment. Baines, the Lancashire historian of cotton manufacturc, already quoted, who wrote in 1835, after rehearsing the train of processes, cannot forbear exclaiming : " It is by iron fingers, tecth, and whcels, moving with exhaustless energy and devouring speed, that the cotton is opened, cleaned, spread, carded, drawn, rove, spun, wound, warped, dressed, and woven. The various machines are proportioned to each other in regard to their capability of work, and they are so placed in the mill as to allow the material to be carried from stage to stage with the least possible loss of time ; all are moving at once-the opera- tions chasing each other; and all derive their motion from the mighty engine, which, firmly seated in the lower part of the building, toils through the day with the strength of perhaps a hundred horses. Men, in the mean while, have merely to attend on this wonderful series of mechanism, to supply it with work, to oil its joints, and to check its slight and infrequent irregularities ; each workman performing, or rather superintending, as much work as could have been done by two or three hundred men sixty years ago."
Yet all this perfection of machine process is only the attainment of many years, half a century at least, and of the worn-out lives of a legion of workers. Brains and hands, working hopelessly in too many instances, were two or three decades in labor before the spinning-frame was evolved, and it is to-day even in doubt to whom the original credit of that great invention belongs. From Crompton's mule to the improved mule of Roberts, fifty years inter- vened. The Scotch loom of the clergyman Cartwright was invented in 1785, and though it was the original suggestion of all power-weaving processes, the inventor would hardly recognize his idca in the improved machine of the present day. While the principles involved were all suggested in the first constructions, time has wonderfully developed their perfection and magnified both the extent and the quality of their results, so that, what with an enlarged experience and advanced practical science, the model mill of the present must indeed be pretty near the culminating point of excellence in location, structure, labor organization, and mechanical equipment.
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PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE.
To explain satisfactorily, for the comprehension of the general and unprac- tical reader, the elaborate operation through which a yard of cotton cloth is produced, would be impossible by means of ordinary letterpress, a patient inspection of processes from stage to stage, and story to story, in the mill, being the only mode of imparting a knowledge that involves so much beauty of theory and ingenuity of application. The following bare and superficial suggestion of the processes of manufacture may not, however, be without its value to the reader.
Among the more recently erected mills of Fall River there are probably three or four-possibly a larger number-superior in organization of labor and machine process to any in the world. As the most recent constructions, they not only possess the very latest practical features of perfection in all details of equipment, but are the best efforts of the wisest brains of a community of experts. The general production of the Fall River mills is print cloth, and when we state the probable and generally conceded fact that a yard of print cloth costs to produce in that city less than the same yard costs to produce in any other manufacturing district in the United States, the inference is obvious as to the relative capability of production.
In print-cloth parlance the standard of extras-as the marketable first quality goods are termed-is a piece or cut 28 inches in width and 454 yards in length, having 64 threads per inch running lengthwise, and 64 threads run- ning crosswise, the cloth-that is, the goods have a standard fineness of 64 threads, or 64 by 64. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the transverse threads the weft.
In the production of a yard of cotton the first stage regards the prepara- tion of the raw material for the machining into threads. Every mill has its cotton house, conveniently located as is possible, fire-proof so far as ordinary care will secure that qualification, and dry. In a few of the later Fall River structures, where the location has permitted, the basement, but partially sunk, is used for storage of the raw material. The average stock carried by a mill is one thousand bales. Two thirds of the cotton worked up in Fall River is purchased directly for account of the mills, in the South. The grade runs from good ordinary to low middlings. Gulf and bottom-land cottons are much preferred, although it is brought to the city from every part of the pro- ducing region. No day passes that a Fall River mill treasurer has not an opportunity to purchase stock, and that quotations from every cotton centre in the country are not presented by the local brokers.
The first introduction of the raw cotton to its new life is its conveyance to the mixing-room, where the bagging and hoops that it put on in the South- ern cotton-press are removed. An average quantity of twenty-five tons is
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FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
assorted ready for the subsequent operation of cleaning. Here we have our initial glance at the white mass, and can imagine, or attempt to, the myriad myriads of fibres in that fleecey pile. Taking a tiny lock between finger and thumb and pulling the staple, what a delicate filmy nothing is the cotton fibre ! It would beggar fancy, could we estimate the infinity of fibres in that moun tain of twenty-five tons, reflecting that one week's work of the six towering stories demands that all the fibres of three such mountains shall be cleansed, dusted, straightened and laid out side by side, roved and twisted, and finally elongated into miles on miles of thread of warp and weft, to be interlaced and woven into 250,000 yards of cloth.
Manufacturing conventionalism has originated many expressions strange to well-disciplined terminology, and one of these is the word bing. The bing is the heap of cotton after it is mixed.
In all well-ordered factorics it is considered of large importance to con- stitute the bing of fair proportions of all the bales. The wool from each bale is cvenly spread in a layer upon a perfectly clean floor, so that when the whole number of bales are opened a section cut through from top to bottom will include a contribution from the whole stock. As the cotton in one bale may, notwithstanding the most careful discrimination, be superior or inferior in part or whole, this procedure is obviously important to assure uniformity of the character of yarn, which is a prime quality. No small skill or judg- ment is exercised in the mixing operation, in order to improve a weak stapled quality and make it work into good yarn. Cottons differing at all consider- ably in their length of staple and form of fibre lack the elements of strength and tenuity, and the careful manufacturer regards this difficulty with the utmost jealousy, often using fingers and sometimes the microscope to deter- mine characteristics of his raw material. It is said that cotton-brokers-and why not mixers-in exceptional instances, can detect the original locality and year of a bale of cotton, blindfolded, by the simple pull of staple and feel of fibre in their fingers.
Having been mixed, the first introduction of the fleecy bing to its new life is at the eight-inch orifice of a tin or sheet-iron tube. A man sitting at the mouth of the tube does nothing the live-long day but throw armful after armful of cotton into it, a strong inhalation drawing it through as fast as it is served. Urged swiftly along its dark passage, the cotton is precipitated upon and into a revolving cylinder, having an inner bottom wall of fine screen- work and an internal mechanism of moving arms. During its revolution it is beaten and whipped violently by the active arms, the consequent agitation together with a strong air-current forced into the cylinder, separating the usual constituents of dust, sand, and other foreign matter, and driving it through
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PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE.
the screen, to which the main body clings till thrown from an extended apron in fleecy masses on the floor.
There now remains a proportion of seeds, nubs, and leaves yet to be expelled. This is the office of a train of pickers, from each of which, as it moves along, the cotton issues cleaner and cleaner. The pickers first receive the cot- ton between revolving fluted rolls, from which it is torn into minute fragments by the swiftly operating blades of what is termed the beater, the object being to loosen the hard-packed filaments of the pressed bale, and still farther disin- tegrate the foreign material. Conveniently situated at this point is an aper- ture through which enters a powerful draught, which seizes the light fibres as they arc torn by the flat blades of the beater, and lodges them on the face of a revolving screen, at the same time expelling the more palpable dirt and leaves from the machine. Carried on the exterior of the screen, the cotton is next introduced to another set of rollers, beaters, and screens, until, frce from all its plantation and press-room vices, it emerges in a coil of broad laps of proper weight and uniform thickness, ready to be subjected to the operation of the carding-machines.
The office of the carding engines-generally two, a breaker and finisher- is to still farther separate the filaments and to complete the work of the pickers, and to turn out the cotton, straightencd in parallel direction of staple and fibre, in an ultimately continuous strand. If we look in our Webster Unabridged at the common word sliver, which from time immemorial is asso- ciated with the wounded fingers of childhood, many of us will be able to catch the meaning of a term that the agent of a Fall River mill uses with an entire correctness of original phraseology and application that must be conceded, but a disregard for the pronunciation of the outside world which is at least startling. The sli-ver of the cotton-manufacturer's terminology is a provincial English word, and expresses the condition of cotton in a straight strand or ribbon ; and it is the business of the carding-room to perform the operation upon the raw material which shall entitle it to this appellation.
Uncurled from the roll of laps by a movement so slow as to be imper- ceptible to the eye, within the grasp of fluted iron rolls, the cotton is now exposed to the revolving surface of a large cylinder, as thickly studded with minute, exquisitely fine, and hook-pointed teeth as the drum of a music-box. Caught by this legion of tentacles-and it seems impossible for a single particle, however insignificant, to elude them-every fibre is torn individually from every other fibre, and from all foreign substances. The bunch or seed that may have escaped the picker, essays in vain a farther intimacy with the cotton. It can not hide itself away among the interstices of the teeth, but, left on the surface, is at once caught up in a series of "top slats," also armed
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FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
with tentacles, which cover the upper periphery of the machine. Opposite to the side of the earding cylinder, at which the cotton lap attaches to it, is another cylinder, some 16 to 18 inches in diameter, called the doffer, whosc office is to receive the carded, straightencd body of dismembered filaments and roll it out in a flcecy shect, combing delicately but decidedly the fibrous constituents into a uniform direction.
The extreme tenuity of the shcet as it falls from the doffer may be inferred from the fact that it is only a hundredth part the thickness of the lap which entered the main cylinder.
This thin sheet, as it proceeds from cach doffer, is made to pass through an elliptical orifice, and is thus formed into the sli-ver or strand, about an inch broad and perhaps one eighth of an inch thick. The cards are worked in gangs, twelve or thirteen of them together, usually placed in a row, and each deposits its charge upon an endless belt, which traverses their united frontage, gathering up the combined production, and finally delivers it to the curious and clever process of the railway head.
The duty of this machine is to transform the bulky mass of fibre coming from the thirteen cards into a small, even, and manageable strand. The railway head is a series of rolls, kept in proper relative contiguity by weighting, to which converge, by means of the belt above referred to, the ribands of cotton from the rank of cards. The stream of ribands, ten inches broad and an inch thick apparently, enters the rolls, and, coming out so thin as to almost resemble cloth of the same width, is swept into a trumpet, delicately poised on springs and having an elliptical aperture hardly one eighth by half an inch in dimensions. Through this small aperture passes the entire product of thirteen eards. The function of the trumpet is double, it being not only to govern the confluence of these distinct streams of machine fibre and reduce them to an approximate stage of their subsequent proportion, but also to correct any errors of weight due to an occasional default of its principles. To the observer's eye it has a generally swaying motion ; a downward deflection indicating overweight in the coincident delivery, and an upward the opposite. As soon as it discovers a discrepancy, however, it automatically increases or slackens the speed of the delivery roll, and thus regulates the excess or deficiency.
From the mouth of the trumpet the strand of sli-ver is coiled in a cylin- drical case, standing ready to receive it. In the avcrage Fall River mill there are twelve of these gangs or sections of cards, six of which treat the cotton which goes into the warp, and the same number that for the weft. In England, previous to the invention of the railway head, which was originated at the cotton factories in Matteawan, N. Y., each card delivered into its individual
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PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE.
can, and an independent process was requisite to unite the products in one strand.
We have now arrived at the first form of the thread. We have the cotton clean, the fibres straight and parallel, but the thread is much too large, and altogether lacks strength, being nothing more than a spongy continuity, held together by the mere coherence of its staple. To reduce it to a suitable size and impart the needed degree of strength, are problems next claiming our attention, the solution of which calls for two processes of drawing, three of speeding, and finally the function of the mule, or yarn finishing proper.
Twist is the element which adds strength to sli-ver, by compactly twining about each other the cotton fibres. In the drawing-frames no twist is imparted ; in the speeders, or roving-frames, only so much as will afford enough strength to uncoil itself for each succeeding process; but in the mule all the twist is furnished that a perfect and enduring thread demands. From each consecutive stage of the process of manufacture we are now consider- ing, the strand gradually emerges smaller and smaller, nearer and nearer approaching the yarn, which is our objective.
The process of drawing is conducted by machines involving the same principle as the railway head, and not unlike it in general design, having rollers and funnel preserving the same relations to each other. In the first pro- cess three separate strands, the product of the railway head, are drawn down by the action of fluted rolls, and then united through a trumpet or funnel in one strand. The second process is an exact copy of its precedent, the same number of strands emerging from the first train of drawing-rolls being sub- jected to a second operation of union. The effect of this machining has been not only to reduce the relative bulk of the sli-ver, but to perfect the straighten- ing of filaments, and by associating ribands of sli-ver to strengthen the whole.
The strand is now ready for the action of the speeders. These are three in number, namely, the slubber, intermediate, and jack. The processes of these machines are all similar, the work being simply a series of stages. As in the drawing-frames, the grooved rolls are still essential features, reducing gradually the volume of the strand. But, as twist is first here introduced, an entirely new feature is now for the first time found, in the presence of the spindle.
From the cans containing the product of the drawing-frames, the sli-ver is first subjected to the train of rolls, and then passes automatically on its way till seized by a bifurcated attachment of a revolving spindle, of which there are generally thirty to each slubber or coarse-roving frame. The spindle like- wise carries a wooden bobbin or spool, the flyer, as the bifurcated attachment is called, setting over it on the spindle. The strand, in the grasp of one of
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FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
the arms of the flyer, is swung round and round by its revolution, and thus compelled to assume a regular degree of twist, while, directed by the other arm, it is wound about the convenient bobbin in layers of coil.
The rolls through which the strand is fed, and the spindle which carries both flyer and bobbin, have cach their regular and certain speed of revolu- tion, but, while the flyer revolves with the spindle, the bobbin has its indc- pendent motion and different in speed from that of the flyer. This variance of velocities is necessary, sincc, if both revolved with the same speed, the small periphery of the bobbin could not take up the full measure of roving, as the strand is called after twisting, fed to it by the extended arm of the flyer. To meet this exigency has required no especial skill in mechanical movements, but a second difficulty presented itself, much more serious. This discovered itself in the increasing surface of the bobbin, its volume enlarging with every additional coil of roving, while the stream itself was not at any time accelerated or slackened. The result was that the bobbin must have what may be termed a speed varying from itself, a velocity of rotation in inverse ratio to its increase of periphery. The solution of this problem, for a time baffling the inventive powers of many excellent machinists, was at last achieved by Mr. Henry Houldsworth, of Manchester, England, who devised an equational motion, by which every exigency was allowed for. It may well be called the differ- ential calculus applied to mechanism ; a more beautiful device certainly is not known in the whole range of cotton machinery.
The slubber, or coarse-rover, is followed by the intermediate. This machine has just half the number of bobbins of its predecessor, two bobbins in the former delivering strands to one in the latter framc. The same process is pursued with the jack or fly-frame, which is the last of the train of roving- machines.
The bobbins of the fly-frame represent the finished product of the card- ing-room. All the stages of the manufacture so far described are under the direction of one man, who employs about sixty operatives to perform his work in all its branches.
From the processes of the three speeders, the sli-ver, or, under its new appellation, roving, receives just so much twist, and no more, as is essential to enable it to unwind, without impairing its uniformity. Having still to undergo a process of elongation and consequent attenuation, a proportionately increasing union of filaments is obviously demanded.
The finishing and spinning stage of the cotton thread is now rcached. The machine by which these final operations are performed is termed a mule. The name of a hybrid animal was probably given to the machine at its birth, because it had two distinct functions-to subject the cotton strand to its
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PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE.
extreme tension, and thus draw it down to the constituency of thread, and to exert upon it the maximum torsion required to give it a permanent twist, and thus, by the perfect implication of its filaments, to assure its strength.
The mule is the most ingenious and complex machine used in cotton manufacturing. If it possesses no isolated feature as curious as Houlds- worth's exquisitely clever application of equational mechanism to the speed of the bobbin, in the antecedent process, it is the combination of numberless adroit achievements and ingenious devices, contributed by as many inventive hands almost as its whole has parts. No man can claim as his own invention the machine as it now is, the growth of many brains and product of many inventions.
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